costs

That $20 (or $10, or $30) Indian laptop

There has been much vaunting on the Interweb these past couple of days concerning India's "$20 laptop." Or is it $10, or $30? In fact, the number of putative prices for the "Sakshat" device (which apparently means "before your eyes") comfortably exceeds the number of hard facts that have emerged.

For a start, it doesn't appear to be a laptop at all, if the picture relayed by Gizmodo Wednesday is anything to go by. Instead, it seems to be a small (10 inches by 5 inches) "storage device" with a … Read more

Data breaches cost $6.6 million on average, survey finds

It costs $6.6 million on average when an organization suffers a data breach, and more than $200 per compromised record, according to a survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute that's due to be released on Monday.

The report, sponsored by PGP Corp., examined the costs incurred by 43 organizations that experienced a data breach. Breaches ranged as high as 113,000 records and the average total cost per company ranged from more than $613,000 per breach to nearly $32 million.

Most of the cost is due to lost business, which averaged nearly $4.6 million, the report … Read more

OLPC slashes workforce in half, cuts salaries

The One Laptop Per Child project announced Wednesday that it is slashing its workforce by 50 percent, reducing salaries for the remaining staff, and restructuring its operations.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the group that aims to provide low-cost laptops to children in developing countries, announced the cuts in a company blog post:

Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people. While … Read more

Motorola cuts compensation and benefits package

As the recession takes its toll, Motorola announced Wednesday that it is cutting compensation and benefits packages for its employees, including top executives.

Co-CEO Greg Brown will forgo a 2008 cash bonus earned under his incentive plan, while co-CEO Sanjay Jha will forfeit his cash bonus at a similar level as Brown's and take the remainder of his cash bonus in restricted stock.

Beginning in the new year, Motorola plans to suspend its matching 401(k) contributions, leaving employees to be the sole contributors to their 401(k) plans.

And a number of Motorola employees will face a salary … Read more

Oracle's second quarter to be a mixed bag

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Oracle reports its fiscal second-quarter results on Thursday, and analysts are expecting weaker-than-expected license revenue, healthy maintenance subscriptions, a potential earnings miss, and some belt-tightening on deck. In other words, expect a mixed bag.

Wall Street is expecting earnings of 34 cents a share, excluding items and 26 cents a share fully loaded. Revenue is expected to be $5.86 billion, with gross margins of 77.5 percent, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. Analysts expect Oracle to deliver third-quarter earnings of 34 cents a share on revenue of $5.9 … Read more

Report: G1 costs 10 percent less to make than iPhone

Update: 4 p.m. Wednesday: Let's get this G1 cost thing straight, shall we? Writer Matt Hickey clarifies some of the points he made in the post below and thanks readers for their feedback. This post was also altered to reflect the correct retail price for the G1.

When it comes to the next-gen phone wars, two handsets immediately come to mind: Apple's iPhone and the G1 from HTC and T-Mobile, the first commercially available phone to run Google's Android OS.

The G1 retails to new customers for $179, while the basic-model iPhone goes for for $199. … Read more

For China, the financial crisis is an opportunity

I asked my colleagues in frog design's Shanghai studio about their perspective on the current economic downturn, and here's what they wrote back:

"The US may be the initiator of this round of global economic recession but it may not be the final payer. China's economy is about to suffer as well - and in more ways than one.

And yet, the people who have been around the longest know not to pay too much attention to one-direction comments. They know that the sufferers will always shout much louder than the beneficiaries. They also know that … Read more

Photos: Cracking open the 2GoPC

Low-cost laptops are pretty much the bare bones of what a user needs in a computer, so consider this an X-ray.

CNET sister site TechRepublic runs a regular series called "Cracking Open," in which it takes a look inside a variety of gadgets. Here's an excerpt of a photo gallery that takes apart the Classmate 2GoPC.

Click on the picture above for a full teardown of the low-cost portable based on Intel's Classmate PC reference design.

CostToDrive estimates gas costs for road trips

The other day I picked up a rental car while visiting Los Angeles. In just a few days it ended up costing me well over the price of gas it would have taken to drive my own car there and back. A smart tool called CostToDrive would have helped me figure this out before I made the trip. It calculates how much a trip is going to cost you based on how far you're traveling, combined with the fuel efficiency of your car and average price of gas. Assuming you have to fill up when your tank is about … Read more